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Thursday, August 26, 2010

Who is this punk?

Andrea Lafferty over at Big Peace reports that the fight over the Ground Zero Victory Hamasque has just gotten even more interesting...

"On Sunday I was honored to be a speaker at the rally against building the mosque at ground zero put on by the Coalition to Honor Ground Zero. As the rally concluded, thousands of the participants marched the one block from the rally site to the actual site of Ground Zero.

I noticed a man in black shirt with a phone camera aggressively questioning and haranguing a gentleman with the sign, “No Sharia Here.” He was very aggressive, disrespectful and condescending; apparently, he did not like the gentlemen’s answers about Shariah and pushed the point: “Why do you feel threatened? What are you afraid of? Why can’t you answer my questions?”

My instincts told me to document the scene, and I took out my camera. I originally thought he was a supporter of the mosque (they’d gathered in much smaller numbers a few blocks away), or some kind of fringe reporter for a small, even fringier leftist paper. When I challenged the man in the black shirt, asking him to tell me what media outlet he worked for, he refused to answer. He walked away.

But there was cameraman was standing nearby, watching the scene play out. When I asked, he said he worked for ABC News. I then asked if the man in the black shirt was with him. The ABC cameraman said, “yes.”

Sure enough, a few blocks away, I observed the man in the black shirt getting into an ABC News truck and putting on the sound equipment. When he saw me with my camera, he attempted to hide. At that time it became clear the man in the black shirt was an employee of ABC News. The ABC cameraman also witnessed his colleague’s aggressive behavior–and did nothing to stop him.

Clearly, the ABC employee’s role at the rally was to provoke a confrontation with participants so ABC News cameras could record it and then use the footage. The ABC employee was literally making news."

Many of us have known for years that the vermin in the media have been working hand-in-hand with leftist causes for decades now so this hardly comes as any suprise. The New York Post meanwhile, had this to say about the stabbing of Muslim cab driver, Ahmed Sharif...

"Some are going to say the attack, which occurred in Midtown Tuesday evening, is part of a rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes — and was driven by intemperate rhetoric from opponents of the mosque. But this is a complicated story. For one thing, the alleged attacker, Michael Enright, worked with an organization that very much favors the project. For another, the cabby, Ahmed Sharif, says he’s opposed to it — though Sharif does say that he’s worried that debate over the planned project might have played a role in the attack. Surely, he can be forgiven that concern — reason enough for all parties to the debate to practice rhetorical moderation."

The insistance that the Victory Hamasque just has to be so close to Ground Zero is a news story that is taking on a life of it's own and in today's continuous news cycle, the above news stories only came to light after another piece that I had wanted to highlight caught my attention. It seems that the FOX News affiliate in New York (FOX News 5) decided they wanted to interview The Man Behind The Hamasque, a real estate developer named Sharif el-Gamal . It seems that just a couple of years ago, el-Gamal was waiting tables in Manhattan and decided to give real estate a try. That I could only devise such a lucrative career move that paid off with such a stunning return so quickly...

".. just a few years ago, el-Gamal was waiting tables in some fancy Manhattan restaurants.

Naturally, we wanted to talk to Sharif el-Gamal to learn more about the man and his plans, but apparently he didn't want to meet us. We made repeated requests for a sit down interview with him, left him multiple voice mail messages and he never returned any of our calls. We even went to his office and talked to colleagues, but we were turned away. He left us with no choice: We had to go find him...

Today, el-Gamal's holdings included at least four buildings in Manhattan, including the site near Ground Zero, one in Chelsea, and two residential buildings in Washington Heights, where tenants seem to like him.

Records show el-Gamal bought the Washington Heights properties in 2007 for a little less than $3 million each.

Ken Brandman, president of N.Y. Commercial Real Estate Services, knows el-Gamal well. He, too, was a bit surprised to hear el-Gamal is the developer in the mosque near Ground Zero.

"I don't think he has a lot of money," Brandman said. "I'm sure he didn't buy it with his own money."

Soho Properties bought the site for the mosque for $4.8 million in cash. Just four months later, with Manhattan's real estate market collapsed, el-Gamal made an even bigger deal.

With credit super tight, and prices plummeting, he paid $45 million for a 12-story commercial building in Chelsea that sold three years earlier for $31 million.

"It seems like a lot of pay in a downturn, considering it went for considerably less during the boom," said Stuart Elliott, the editor of Real Deal magazine.

El-Gamal, the waiter turned mogul, plunked down another $5 million as down payment on the Chelsea building.

"Something's up with that deal," Ken Brandman said. "Unless someone gave him a lot of money, or he won the lottery, than somebody else put up the money."

Fox 5 News has learned that el-Gamal did have help from a man named Hisham Elzanaty. Mortgage documents show that Elzanaty is the guarantor on the $39 million loan el-Gamal's company secured to buy the building.

We repeatedly asked El-Gamal where he raised the money, where it was coming from, but he refused to answer our questions and [ran] from us. He also did not answer the question of whether he would consider relocating the mosque".

If you arent ready to start breaking things and throwing your monitor out the window by now, then this video of a deranged, left-wing seditionist cursing out a holocaust survivor (in his 80's for crying out loud) at a demonstration against the Victory Mosque certainly will if you have so much as an ounce of American blood in your veins. So I ask you, which side of this issue are you on? The one in which freedom of religion is anathema to it's very core? Or the side that figures that a holocaust survivor recognizes this for what it is, has lived through this nightmare before and doesn't want to see it happen again?